Oprah Admits to Suffering Symptoms of a Nervous Breakdown

Talk show maven Oprah Winfrey recently admitted that she experienced symptoms of a nervous breakdown last year while filming her most recent film, “The Butler,” reports Access Hollywood.

Sitting with ”Access Hollywood’s Shaun Robinson in an interview that will air beginning Sept. 24, Winfrey, who juggles a number of businesses, admitted that co-starring in “The Butler” and multi-tasking all of her ventures proved to be too much for her.

Winfrey reportedly told Robinson that she “was in the middle of [her] struggling network” when she was called to appear in the film.

The media titan said she went from conducting her celebrity interviews for her OWN Network’s “Oprah’s Next Chapter” to working on scenes for the movie.

The “Ah-ha” moment for Winfrey regarding her sanity, though, came during an interview with Jason Russell of the Kony 2012 movement.

Russell, an activist and maker of the Invisible Children film that went viral, “Kony 2012,” reportedly suffered a very ‘brief psychotic episode,” when he ran naked through the streets of a Pacific Beach, Calif., neighborhood allegedly interrupting traffic and ranting incoherently as he struck the sidewalk with his fists. By the time police arrived, Russell reportedly put his underwear back on and allowed them to subdue him.

For Winfrey, Russell ‘s vivid description of his mental episode rang eerily close to what she had been feeling about herself, “I was sitting and listening to Jason Russell describe his symptoms…saying, Um, this sounds pretty familiar to me,” Winfrey told Robinson who then asked, what her symptoms were at the time.

“In the beginning, it was just sort of speeding and a kind of numbness and going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. I will tell you when I realized that I thought, All right, if I don’t calm down I’m gonna be in serious trouble. I was in the middle of doing voiceovers, you know? And I remember closing my eyes in between each page because looking at the page and the words at the same time was too much stimulation for my brain.”

Winfrey realized she had better slow her roll when she interviewed former member of the Black Eyed Peas Fergie. “I mean, I wasn’t ready to go run naked in the streets. Let’s make that very clear,” Winfrey said, referring to the Russell incident. “But I had reached a point where I just couldn’t take in anymore stimulation. Ok? That’s what I meant by that.”

The no holds-barred interview also touches upon Winfrey’s long-standing relationship with Stedman Graham and her never-will-air pseudo-sex scene with ‘Butler’ co-star Terrence Howard. The scene was taken out of the film because Winfrey felt it was out of character for her.